Episode Summary
After a meaningful pause, Nicole Cruz is back — and she’s brought her whole story with her. In this reintroduction episode, Nicole shares the arc that led her from a decade in corporate America to building a coaching practice rooted in cultural wisdom, lived experience, and one defining question: what does it actually mean to be fully alive?
If you’ve ever arrived at the destination you worked your whole life toward — and felt something was still missing — this episode is for you.
What We Cover
- Why Nicole stepped away from the podcast (hint: she became a mom 🍼)
- Growing up as the daughter of Filipino immigrants and the unspoken “script” that came with it
- Over 10 years in corporate — sales, marketing, and CSR at a major healthcare company — and what it cost her to succeed there
- The moment of clarity that made staying impossible
- Leaving her six-figure career, traveling the world for a year, and what she found on the other side
- How she discovered coaching — and why it felt like coming home
- Why she specifically serves women of color and first and second-generation leaders
- The role of culture, conditioning, and white supremacy in the work she does with clients
- How becoming a mother has deepened the meaning of this work
Key Quotes
“Once you know, and once you feel, and once you see it — you can’t unsee it. You can’t unfeel it. You can’t unknow it.”
“It was the first time in my life I really experienced pure joy, euphoria. This is what living feels like. This is what it feels like to be fully alive.”
“The script didn’t include — okay, what do you do once you get there? When there doesn’t feel the way you thought it would.”
“The soft skills I thought weren’t as valuable were actually the ones that really lend themselves to this work.”
“This work is contributing to the world I want my daughter to grow up in.”
About Nicole
Nicole Cruz is a leadership and life coach, TEDx speaker, and mama. She works with women of color and first and second-generation leaders who have mastered achievement but are missing fulfillment. With nearly eight years of experience in culturally-informed coaching, Nicole helps her clients get radically honest about what they want now — and reorient their lives around that vision.
Connect with Nicole
- Instagram: @nicolecruzcoaching
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolecruzmba/
- Email: nicole@nicolecruzcoaching.com
- Explore 1:1 coaching: DM Nicole on Instagram or send her an email
If This Episode Resonated With You
If you heard yourself somewhere in Nicole’s story — in the immigrant household, in being the only person of color in the room, in arriving and still feeling like something’s missing — you’re in the right place.
And if you’re sitting with a voice asking is this it? is there more? — that voice is worth listening to.
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